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right now, seekers explode by the zillions to missiles (and plasma). Even with full support bots to bump their defense and equal scopes (I.e. my one 122 bot missile with no boosters to help will blast 3500ish seekers from richin109 with us both having 100% scopes & him having full support bots in the zone).

If you have a base with full support bot deployments (40k booster/40k galvanic) it costs 160,000 qredits before adding in things like harden lattice & such. you are going to have a significant number of bots (lets say 500,000-1mil minimum) or it can be flattened effortlessly in a couple hours if you look away.

Even with 25k Hardened Lattice (where it caps it's effect), the benefit is negligible (if anything) before the stronghold is taken to the point where it's probably well & truely lost but just hasn't gotten the memo yet.

Seekers from a max scope with full support bots are only an obstacle to a newbie

Absorber is pretty useless at protecting seekers from missiles/plasma. It might be useful for something

Zone assault is a little tougher & takes seekers to destroy them in the 10:1 range. On the upside, seekers can't be launched from 400 miles away

Zone assault will only help against an opponent moving in boosters/deflection/etc though & does very little to defend against an attacker, even ones with significantly weaker scopes and no attempts at forming a beachhead to deploy support bots. an inbound deployment of shockwaves will deal significant damage to absorbers & deflectors even with ZA there

Just having Seekers present will decimate any shockwave assault before it gets to chip at deflectors at full strength.

Having multiple defenders with seekers present is actually the best way of protecting them from decimation because an attacker's missile can only decimate one defender's seekers per launch

Using the rough numbers from two 100% scopes with full defensive support bots in place, a couple lower ranged scopes with 1200 seekers each and no support bots is equally as difficult to clear by a maxed scope than a maxed scope with full support bots and ~10,000 seekers.

If you toss in a spouse or two with a couple hundred each, the numbers get even more distorted

and a defender could be spending more than half their deployments just clearing a few hundred bots that would be flattened by a single deployment (of nearly anything) if they were able to attack them as a group. Even if it cost 1000qredits to launch a flight of seekers that kept hunting till dead, or all opponents have been daisy chained one after another, it would be better for the defender being chipped away at. by having one player deploying a full tank at a rate close to the optimal deployment rate* day in & day out, a second doing the same an hour or two at a time here and there, and one or more spouses with nearly stock scopes joining in occasionally.

All of this is all well & good, but the fatal problem is that seekers dodge into missiles & dance in the fire oblivious to the fact that missile fire is hot like bugs to a bug zapper

if you have two defenders (lets call them andy & beth) making use of gobs of divert to cloak Andy's seekers seekers behind Beth's higher threat deflectors to protect against shockwave/za... when Charles comes along with a missile /seeker combo to strip Beth's ZA/seeker's, andy's seeker will not do jack until Beth is wiped out or Andy does something to put his sekers into a position where they will leap into missiles & plasma

If Andy has the following (just tested) makeup with his maxed scope:

4581 leftover missile4 bots

749152 deflector5

30,000 Hardened lattice2 (oops a bit over the cap, accidentally, but there is no 3 or4

1184 seeker4

206734 divert5

40000 booster4

45000 strengthen4

Beth hasan 83% scope and 29019 bots in the zone

Charles comes along with some shockwaves/missiles & his 38% scope & gets his shockwaves munched by the seekers (only 290 survive)

Look at the attached picture to see how the story unfolds. Needless to say, it does bot go well for Andy's 1184seeker4 or Beth's much higher threat 29019 bots.

despite "Divert is only useful when used as part of a team defense ... every divert bot offsets the threat of approximately five defense or support bots. Divert also has the same effect on aggression for offensive bots, making it more likely that your friends will step up to take out incoming defensive bots. Your scope must have..." indicating that 206734 divert5's (which should be 0 threat themselves based on the bot description)should be able to cover 1033670 of Andy's bots despite him having only ~868733 non-divert bots in the zone and a combined 5765 attack bots (1184 seeker, 4581 missile) somehow overwhelming the remaining 16,4937 bots worth of divert coverage.

I don't see any reason to pour even more divert5 bots into the zone considering the evidence so far.

What should happen? seeker/zone assault should be able to made reasonably defensible/a new bottype that works like a reasonably sturdy/functional preemptive attack defensive seeker substitute to where stripping fully strengthened massive numbers them can not be done in seconds by an attacker with no boosters and an equal (especially not worse!) scope.

Alternately, the "team defense" that divert mentions should allow two or more players with bots in a zone to work as a "team" and defend each other rather than have their "team" of bots play every man for himself instead of working together as a team.

i.e. Andy's seekers sit behind Beth's deflectors "acting as a sniper unit" when Charles throws some zone assault/shockwave against Beth's higher threat deflectors & Beth's higher threat deflectors should jump up to intercept Charles's subsequent plasma/missile to provide each other at least partial support to each other's bots

. * I'm not posting it on the forums for everyone to see, but it allows for far more bots & more non-qonqr time spend deploying per hour than someone deploying significantly less bots whenever their scope will allow.

P.S. The next time someone makes a suggestion like post number 5 here & many others like it elsewhere, the actual numbers today prove their wild guess at how it works inaccurate at best

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I've read through this a couple times. I don't know if I quite understand what point you are trying to make. Are you saying that despite the divert that should have kept the seekers from being hit, they still were hit first because of the attack order?

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I've read through this a couple times. I don't know if I quite understand what point you are trying to make. Are you saying that despite the divert that should have kept the seekers from being hit, they still were hit first because of the attack order?

yep. That and there is no "team strategy" like divert describes, because the bots act in an every man for himself manner in the zone

There is also the fact that seeker/zone assault being so easy to demolish simply by using the right bot (5-10:1 with equal scope and full defensive/offensive support bots for defender/nothing attacker), that it causes other problems made much worse by the divert screwyness

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Let's look at the deflect first, since it is the base defense unit being referenced at 5:1

749,152 divert / 5 = 149,830 divert to cover all deflect

That leaves 56,904 worth of divert to cover the rest of the bots. However if you look at the bot description, It also gives a rating on threat generated. Deflection is listed at 2/5. Seekers, Boosters, and Strengthen are listed at 3/5, Hardened Lattice is listed at 4/5. I'm not sure what the coverage ratio is for these formations. (My guess 3/5 = 3:1, 4/5 = 2:1) But whatever they are, it generated enough threat to not be completely covered by divert.

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I agree that bots from the same faction should be working together rather than in a "every bot for themselves" fashion. However, diverts are not meant to cover seekers. They are meant to cover support bots. Only support bots actually help the team, and the loss of support bots means the team loses out. So diverts are used to mask the presence of supports.

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I agree that bots from the same faction should be working together rather than in a "every bot for themselves" fashion. However, diverts are not meant to cover seekers. They are meant to cover support bots. Only support bots actually help the team, and the loss of support bots means the team loses out. So diverts are used to mask the presence of supports.

ahem...

The divert formation leverages stealth capabilities. Use the divert formation to defend your medium range bots in that zone. Having a lower threat means that your bots are less likely to be targeted by enemy assaults, when there are operatives in the zone whose nanobot swarms have a higher threat than yours. Divert is only useful when used as part of a team defense, and best used to cloak the threat of booster & strengthener bots. every divert bot offsets the threat of approximately five defense or support bots. Divert also has the same effect on aggression for offensive bots, making it more likely that your friends will step up to take out incoming defensive bots. your scope must have...

Lets pull it apart point at a time to see if you are correct:

The divert formation leverages stealth capabilities.

Nothing to debate here.

[*]Use the divert formation to defend your medium range bots in that zone.

It does nothing of the sort because "seekers are the primary active defense bot" and launch themselves into missile/plasma fire regardless of where you are on the threat ladder.

It does nothing of the sort because after stripping all seekers from all players in the zone with trivial effort by an attacker, the next step is: repeat the process with seekers and strip away all zone assault bots from all players getting 3-5:1ish kill rate against an equal scope with full support bots strengthening/boosting the defender & nothing doing either for the attacker.

the only thing it does is to drop your suppot bots below the threshold of being cleared out while there are other friendly deflection/absorbers in the zone if your deflection is cleared

Lets be honest, if you deploy full support bots & lose all of your defensive bots, you are probably toast anways. The sort of behavior it supports as a "team defense" is during an initial offensive attack when you are building a beach-head & tearing down the entrenched defenders

[*]Having a lower threat means that your bots are less likely to be targeted by enemy assaults, when there are operatives in the zone whose nanobot swarms have a higher threat than yours.

It seems highly unlikely that it successfully does anything of the sort. I had around 30-60,000divert (the number was grown) and was slowwly chipped away by attackers sending shockwaves for days against my deflectors stripping away around half a mil or so deflectors, my allies in the zone never lost a single bot in all that time because their za/seekers were already stripped long ago. Bumping that number up to 206734 divert only sent the attacker's shockwaves against my allies if I had no seeker/zone assault bots to put my deflectors in their path.

[*]Divert is only useful when used as part of a team defense, and best used to cloak the threat of booster & strengthener bots.

​While I agree about part of this, the situation described is only a useful one during a team assault before a stable beachhead can be established.

If the player with all the support bots is stripped of all deflectors it's unlikely that his teammates are going to fare all that much better at not losing the zone unless he's out of town or something.

because of the rock/paper/scissors nature of seekers/missile/zone assault, it doesn't much matter who is nearly effortlessly stripped of them first by attackers.

[*]every divert bot offsets the threat of approximately five defense or support bots.

completely incorrect/false "seekers are the primary active defense bot" but will leap into missiles to play in the flames as long as another player's seekers do not do so first. see the rock/paper scissors problem above for why this is a useless benefit

The only useful thing they accomplish is to hide your support bots behind another's deflectors if you yourself have no more left, see above for why that's only useful during an assault, or out of town vacation.

They will indeed help protect your deflectors, and deflectors only, behind an ally's deflectors once all seekers have been trivially missiled & zone assault trivially seekered. but this is only of use if you are out of town or launching an assault.

[*]Divert also has the same effect on aggression for offensive bots, making it more likely that your friends will step up to take out incoming defensive bots.

See the rock/paper scissors & every man for himself bot behavior. Your friends offensive bots were probably stripped away in seconds (if that) alongside yours before anyone with enough experience (and resulting scope upgrades) to be a threat launched even a single "defensive bot" The behavior exhibited is only useful during an iffy assault & out of town trips where a support bot deployment will be missing its owner

In sort for the TL;DR crowd, multiple parts are working as designed in a vacuum, but seemingly not as intended. When those parts are placed together as part of a greater whole, they each cause one or more other things to stop functioning as described & the intention described goes sideways

yea I know what those were like. I started soon enough after the change to learn about how it was lol. Things are so much better now yes, but there's no reason not to improve the things that are still kinda (or like this, very) borked. I had an unusual circumstance going on for quite a few days where I could definatively prove a long time suspicion & took advantage of toe situation to do just thgat

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Can't say I've ever been called Charles haha But this is actually quite interesting.

http://en.wikipedia....i/Alice_and_Bob names starting with A, B, & C are good for hypothetical examples because they easily translate into logical abc points to group things with . You jusst happened to offer a nice way of proving a suspicion.

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Can I confirm that you are saying that if missiles are deployed that seekers will take the first hit even if Absorbers are in the faction deployment. I always understood that Absorbers took the first hit, so deployed with Harden Lattice and support bots, would provide the most effective defensive units. I use seekers when I see shock waves coming and as this seems to be the only defensive use. I use seekers more as an attacking weapon to clear a zone of attack bots before establishing a defensive beachhead.

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Can I confirm that you are saying that if missiles are deployed that seekers will take the first hit even if Absorbers are in the faction deployment. I always understood that Absorbers took the first hit, so deployed with Harden Lattice and support bots, would provide the most effective defensive units. I use seekers when I see shock waves coming and as this seems to be the only defensive use. I use seekers more as an attacking weapon to clear a zone of attack bots before establishing a defensive beachhead.

absorbers are likewise useless for a defenders zone assault being hit by seekers. The only thing they provide cover for are deflect and support/lattice bots vrs shockwave/zone assault

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I've read this post a number of times and also received your two support emails. You have a few assumptions of how the formations work backwards, but are correctly pointing out that there is a "rock, paper, scissors" mechanic built in to the game.

This is the most accurate representation of what the formations are supposed to do.

I do not believe we have formations 100% perfect, but the complexity of your "if this, then that" scenarios indicate to me that they are pretty good. There should be a way for an attacking squad to chose the best approach to take down a zone. Here are some of the common options we see.

1. Plasma the seekers, seeker the attackers, then build a defensive beachhead backed by support bots, then assault once beachhead established

2. Build a beachhead without taking out enemy assault, and incur heavy casualties to do it, then assault once beachhead established

3. Full frontal assault to slog through the defense with all attack.

4. Something else that fits your situation

Conversely, if you are defending a zone, you should be able to see how the attackers are coming at you and counter. Yes you will have your seekers obliterated by missiles and plasma (seekers are best used as an active defense a few at a time), but it forces the enemy to keep spending credits to sustain the attack, or switch tactics. The key is to actively defend. Setting up a static defense is not usually a good decision.

I've been involved in many major battles involving dozens of players, on both offense and defense. We have been forced in many cases to chose a different plan of attack or defense based on what our enemy was doing. We prefer to build a beachhead when we attack, but when we took down the 6M bot zone in St Paul, there were millions of Zone Assault bots, attempting to seeker them all was a lost cause, so we slogged through a full frontal assault suffering only 30% kill rates. It took more than a week for over a dozen of us to take out the smaller but actively defending force. Had they had just 50% of our force, they probably would have held the zone. St Paul showed me some amazingly well organized (active) defense, but a force of twice as many people, dedicated to an attack for more that a week was something few could hold out against.

Battle is fluid and you need to change your tactics depending on how the enemy responds. If you are looking for the best strategy to put down on paper as a perfect attack or defense for all cases, there isn't one. If there was, the game would not have balance.

We do plan to revisit the battle engine again, but for now, tweaking further provides much less value that many other features our small team is working on. In-game chat, better maps, tactical information, better cheater detection, and Android all provide more value to the players than trying to tweak the battle engine. It doesn't mean we won't do it, but it will be some time before we do. Just the same, I appreciate the thorough analysis you have done. Few people have mapped the mechanics so completely and your factions members (all players) could probably benefit from a custom made strategy guide.

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I think there are a few things causing me to both agree with some of what you said, and disagree with other parts at the same time. I can trace the problem with both two the fact that a number of them go out the window when one (or both) side is deploying at a near-optimal rate for max bots per hour to make excellent use of the way the overheat levels work & deploy significantly more bots than riding the needle into overheat3+ by deploying with a properly set timer to bend over the overheat level's bot recover slowdown's intent;)

When attackers use that method against an unknowing defender(s), a defender has no chance because they will be spending their limited bots just clearing out the attacker over and over again. I've done it time & time again, the ability to drop 200,000+ bots a day while still living a normal life spent not staring at your phone from wake>bed is overwhelming to anyone who's not figured it out.

When defenders use it, against an unknowing attacker riding the needle, the defender appears to be burning cubes at an unimaginable rate & will likely be considered/accused to be doing so by the attacker. I dunno how many times I've been asked some variant of "omg, how many cubes did you burn on that today" only to honestly respond with a number like "0" or "less than 1"

When both sides are doing it, there is a sustained slap fight where a significant portion of each side's deployments is spent simply clearing out the other side's leftovers used to pave the way for deflector/shockwave (20-50% & going up the more people involved on each side).

The rest of the time is spent doing anything but being in a "pitched" battle and turns into an exercize in mutual housekeeping where both sides yawn impotently at each other time and time again

continuing with what happens if both sides deploy at near-optimal rates. it doesn't really matter if the attackers get some friends within 400 miles to clear out whatever the defenders left behind because the defender can clear them all out almost as easily as the attackers did with ZA/seekers. & just rebuild the next cycle. Occasionally one side will be up earlier/later (planned or just work schedule induced) and make some headway, only to have things flop back to where they were on the flipside. Simply figuring out where to set your timer so it falls at the right spot in your opponent's or shifting from the trivial semi-optimal to the more time consuming optimal negates the missile buddy effect. If the number of active semi-optimal defenders (about 25,000 bots/hour each) outnumber the attackers, the attackers stand no real chance at making headway. someone riding the needle into overheat is going to be deploying about a quarter/third as many bots/hour

I very well might be wrong on how you seem to be able to use missile>missile>seeker>seeker to scrub all of the seeker/zone assaults from a zone, it could just be ping ponging through highest threat players, but with the attacks having continued for just over a week now, I've had plenty of time to watch things in action & revise some of my original points, Silver I sent you an email with the deployment rates, everyone else can do what I did and do some math with my rough numbers posted:).

When dealing with huge zones, the number of diverters needed to "make it more likely your allies will step up to..." is indeed astronomical & bordering on pointless

It borders pointless because that chance is nearly binary, either they will step up all the time, or hide in your shadow. You only need enough divert to hideyour support bots behind allies in the event that your deflectors get cleared out. If you have one of more allies who say "oh I still have several thousand bots in the zone, he/she's handling things fine" prepare to pump out absurd numbers of diverters to remedy that in a large zone (see above screenshots)

[*]overheat levels seem to be tied more closely to to deployments rather than the number of bots launched per deployment. this effect is most noticable withsupport bots that pump out 5k bots/launch & other high bot deploymets that will drop the heat on the optimal/semioptimal deployment rates compared to a near equal number of seekers/deflectors/za/etc.

[*]the overheat gague looks at the total number of deployments in the last X time period.

[*]

within that time period, it doesn't matter if you launch them all in the first few seconds using cubed recharges or stagger them out across the whole thing

the chasm between optimal/semioptimal rates and riding the needle into overheat3 is so great that using cubes is almost a pointless

[*]Cube'd refreshes don't affect your overheat gague, only the launch of those bots within the time window, this makes them actually lower the deployment rate by keeping you into a high overheat level (it goes beyond OH3's 1/second)

[*]Both plasma and bot deployments affect the temp to an equal degree, or one that seems to have a statistically insignificant difference. Those left over 140ish energy units only appear free & harm your bot deployment rate if you want to continue assault/defense with more bots unless 1 plasma will nuke more than 1 bot deployment.

[*]seeker/zone assaault/shockwave/deflector seem to generate nearly (if not exactly) the same heat & only vary because some can squeeze oneish more/less deployment in per cycle/every few cycles.

[*]the functionality of absorbers in defending your entrenched zone assault/seeker defenders is suspect & because of how strengthen interacts with them compared to deflectors, their usefulness with full support bots is rather dubious bordering closely on complete waste of credits in most situations that include full support bot compliments.

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Ok that said. You seem to be arguing from a 1v1 perspective. The game is made for team vs. team. Seekers and absorbers true purpose are lost without several people coordinating precision times maneuvers.

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Also you are wrong about cubes. When used correctly, just 5 cubes from a recruiting bonus can be hugely effective and not adversely impact regen. This is, primarily, a psychological game.

effective, indeed the potential is there... but the potential demoralization you refer to does not change the fact that proper deployment rates will pump out significantly more bots than the 5 cubes worth of refresh leaping straight into overheat3. The fact that you think it would "not adversely affect regen" suggests that you are riding the needle into sub-optimal overheat levels where that statement becomes true. There are 86,400 seconds in a day... A player using proper deployment rates can get 8 hours uninterrupted sleep, diligently work 8 hours, eat/shower/commute, do normal stuff, and deploy a few hundred thousand bots. A person who does not will assume they are using massive cube driven bot refreshes & hope they go broke soon.

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No offense, but most of what you said is inaccurate, tetra. You are right that deploying well is crucial to success in this game, especially if your opponent sucks at deploying. However if someone sucks at deploying and you beat them for awhile, you should not assume that they will think you're cubing. They might very well just come read the forums, read the wiki, read the strategy guide, pay attention, teach themselves how to play, and do quite well—maybe even kick your ***.

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To be fair to what you took the time to write Tetra, I'm going to address a few key points you tried to make.

<snip>

When both sides are doing it, there is a sustained slap fight where a significant portion of each side's deployments is spent simply clearing out the other side's leftovers used to pave the way for deflector/shockwave (20-50% & going up the more people involved on each side).

The rest of the time is spent doing anything but being in a "pitched" battle and turns into an exercize in mutual housekeeping where both sides yawn impotently at each other time and time again

<snip>

What you are saying here makes little sense. Calling it a "slap fight" makes no sense.

Also, I don't understand why you say "a significant portion of each side's deployments is spent simpy clearing out the other side's leftovers". That's not how a battle always goes down.

You may choose not to clear out leftovers, depending on several factors. Also, the act of clearing out leftovers is much more complex than you're implying. The factors involved are complex and it would take me several pages of text to explain all the mathematical considerations, teamwork, timing, strategic goals, etc.—and I can't divulge classified Legion battle methods here.

My point is, it's not a simple matter. The fact that you say "simply" in this statement makes me think you just don't realize all the possible strategic considerations and tactics that can impact and add fine nuances to this aspect of QONQR. Perhaps you understand more than you're revealing here, but I think the way you're characterizing things makes it sound like a criticism of the game itself—but in my opinion, it's the players' fault if they can't see any level of strategy beyond that of a "slap fight".

Since you're Legion, I'm happy to share some of the more advaned tactics with you, but not here.

<snip>

the overheat gague looks at the total number of deployments in the last X time period.

within that time period, it doesn't matter if you launch them all in the first few seconds using cubed recharges or stagger them out across the whole thing

the chasm between optimal/semioptimal rates and riding the needle into overheat3 is so great that using cubes is almost a pointless

<snip>

Wrong, it matters a lot if you launch them all in the first few seconds or stagger them out. If you fire off 120 launches between 8:00 AM and 8:05 AM, then at 9:05 AM you will have NO overheat. Whereas if you fire off 20 launches every 10 minutes starting at 8:00 AM, and continuing at 8:10, 8:20, 8:30, 8:40, and 8:50, then at 9:05 AM you will stil be in the maximum overheat level at 9:05 AM.

Using cubes is not pointless. Wasting them on nanobot refreshes is universally a horrible idea though, I'll grant you that.

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Before either of us ever quit this game, we need to have a chat sometime, because I think it would be so much fun to compare notes and see what sort of conclusions we have come to on so many topics in this game.

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I've been involved in many major battles involving dozens of players, on both offense and defense. We have been forced in many cases to chose a different plan of attack or defense based on what our enemy was doing. We prefer to build a beachhead when we attack, but when we took down the 6M bot zone in St Paul, there were millions of Zone Assault bots, attempting to seeker them all was a lost cause, so we slogged through a full frontal assault suffering only 30% kill rates. It took more than a week for over a dozen of us to take out the smaller but actively defending force. Had they had just 50% of our force, they probably would have held the zone. St Paul showed me some amazingly well organized (active) defense, but a force of twice as many people, dedicated to an attack for more that a week was something few could hold out against.

/bow

We were literally scrambling around looking for 1-2 more players, even brand new recruits, because that's all we would have needed to turn the tide of the battle. They were only knocking us down by ~300k bots/day which is fewer bots than a single person can put out. Heck, we probably would have held off that attack had some of our players not used Plasma Beam every time they saw an enemy Seeker (only found out about that after the fact). I still wish I could see the stats from this battle.

When attackers use that method against an unknowing defender(s), a defender has no chance because they will be spending their limited bots just clearing out the attacker over and over again. I've done it time & time again, the ability to drop 200,000+ bots a day while still living a normal life spent not staring at your phone from wake>bed is overwhelming to anyone who's not figured it out.

When both sides are doing it, there is a sustained slap fight where a significant portion of each side's deployments is spent simply clearing out the other side's leftovers used to pave the way for deflector/shockwave (20-50% & going up the more people involved on each side).

Since you're Legion I would advise you to keep this up. There is no way around it and there certainly aren't multiple strategies you can use depending on whether you're attacking/defend solo or in a group. If you're Swarm you should PM me and I can tell you all about how no such strategies exist.

Honestly, I have read each of your posts multiple times and I still have no idea what points you're trying to make other than the one above. You seem to write with a very stream of consciousness style and that's hard (impossible) for others to keep track of since we don't know what you're thinking without context. Try breaking it your posts up into points with a clear thesis statement and then add any additional info needed to help expand on your thesis, e.g.

Seekers get attacked first regardless of the amount of threat a defender has. This causes Seekers to be hit by an opening missile salvo and no matter what the players do they won't be around to defend against later Shockwave attacks. For instance... (Andy, Beth, & Charles' story here but with fully-formed thoughts and ideas so we can follow them)

I think this is one of the points you were trying to make but I'm not sure. Regardless, it would be helpful to put together a post in this form since we are all clearly having issues following your argument and that seems to be frustrating you quite a bit.